


A Service

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Boot Worship, Canon Era, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 10:29:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1741403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire, having failed to do Enjolras one service, almost succeeds at doing him another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Service

It is not until he begins to unfasten the buttons of his red waistcoat that Grantaire realises how much his hands are shaking.

In the street outside the Musain, night is beginning to fall. In daylight, a matter of hours ago, Grantaire had offered to do Enjolras a service. For Enjolras to take him up on it had been both a terror and a delight for which he was entirely unprepared. 

He remembers how rapidly he'd taken himself back to his lodgings, how rapidly he had returned dressed for the occasion, showing Enjolras the colour of his allegiance, and how he'd left the Musain feeling fairly light-headed with the trust invested in him. He had not intended to fail, but equally had not expected to succeed – and telling himself that, if fail he did, it would be down to Enjolras having crowned him with such a dizzying weight of responsibility, under which he could hardly be expected to think straight. 

Had he tried, at least? He felt sure he had, to the best of his ability – but then, what was the best of his ability in a task for which he was so eminently unsuited? Grantaire’s first raised glass upon reaching the Barriere du Maine had been both a toast to his own success and a pre-emptive drowning of the sorrows in which he felt sure this adventure would end. 

Retracing his steps to the Musain’s back room, despite the café’s familiarity, feels like entering uncharted territory. He had not expected Enjolras to have also returned there, to be sitting at the corner table, his legs crossed at the knee and his pen in his hand. His hair is a flash of gold in the lengthening shadows as he turns his head and looks up at Grantaire. 

Enjolras' gaze resolves into something between satisfaction and contempt. He must know all – Grantaire sometimes believes Enjolras’ powers extend to being all-seeing, but even without this ability, one look at Grantaire’s face would tell him the whole story.

Enjolras regards him calmly, candidly, with the set of his mouth almost a smile.

"I went to Richefeu’s, thinking you might need to be checked upon. Thank you for proving my instincts correct in that respect, at least."

Poised in the doorway, Grantaire stares ahead. A shiver runs though him. He had been unsure what result he had hoped for more: for Enjolras to let this failure go noted but unmentioned, for him to be resigned and dismissive somewhere out of Grantaire’s notice – or for Grantaire to be openly excoriated, spared nothing, stripped of Enjolras’ fragile favour and then banished from his presence like a disgraced courtier, left to recede back into formless darkness with only a view of the inaccessible golden heights to which he might aspire.

"I hadn’t expected you back here this evening. Have you exhausted your drinking-money, Grantaire, or were you thrown out? Thank you, whatever your reasons, for demonstrating that a change of clothing does not prove a change in conviction."

Enjolras’ voice is spiked with uncharacteristic venom. Grantaire receives it as no more than his due as, still silent, he turns to face the wall. He shrugs off his coat and smooths the waistcoat’s front before beginning to unbutton it, his hands unsteady. He cannot in all conscience continue to wear these colours, even to prolong his provocation of Enjolras. 

Before he is halfway through he stops and glances over his shoulder, striving to keep his tone light.

"That was a trial run, merely. Let me try again - tomorrow, if you like – I’ll have the whole district downing tools and taking up arms for the Republic before –"

"You aren’t serious. As though you should waste any more of our time."

"Oh, but I am. As I said to you before, I’d do you any service you require –"

Enjolras sets his pen down hard with a look as coldly furious as his voice. 

"You said you’d black my boots, as I recall – as though you consider that a challenge equivalent to organising the studios and quarries to rise, and as though you might be capable of carrying out even an offer that frivolous."

He uncrosses his legs sharply, and stands. Grantaire's stare alights on the way the deep brown leather of his top-boots catches the light. 

"Are you serious on that score, at least?"

Enjolras crosses to the centre of the room and snatches up a dishrag lying abandoned on a table. As Grantaire stares mutely back at him Enjolras throws the scrap of cloth to the floor between his boots and nods down at it, his face impassive.

"I’m not about to trust you with something of major significance, if you still haven’t shown yourself capable of accomplishing a task of barely any."

The weight of his logic is inexorable. There is no reason Grantaire can call to mind why he should not let himself take a few steps forward and drop to his knees on the bare floorboards, their chill and hardness barely registering with him as he focuses on the dark leather boots that sheath Enjolras’ lower legs. Like most of Enjolras’ wardrobe, the boots have seen better days but are immaculately kept, their buckles polished, a dull sheen still on the leather underneath its coating of dirt and dust. 

Grantaire swallows hard and cups his hand around one of the low heels before him. He does not risk raising his gaze above the boot’s cuff, but dares to slide his free hand up the back of Enjolras’ calf, feeling the muscle tense beneath the supple leather as Enjolras settles his foot on Grantaire’s thigh. 

He is unsure if the light-headedness that sweeps through him is drunkenness or sudden sobriety. 

“You should know not to take me at my word, Enjolras. I was merely –” Grantaire licks his lips, which are dry with his sudden daring “- using metaphor. Mapping my own position and perspective relative to your own. I _would_ black your boots, it’s true, but – now that we find ourselves like this – there are other ways that present themselves of enjoyably passing the time - of doing you a service.”

He looks up and finds Enjolras looking down, the austere lines of his face offset by the openly contemptuous curl of his lip. Grantaire feels the urge to turn his cheek in anticipation of being struck, but it is Enjolras’ words that land like a blow instead.

“And you think I find that any more enticing, do you?”

He jerks his foot back to the floor, the heel leaving its indent sharp on the cloth of Grantaire’s trousers. 

“Do you think I haven’t seen the way you look at me? I’m not as ignorant of seduction as you all may think, but I’ve never had any use for it - and I’m certainly immune to this parody of it from you.”

“I wasn’t – I wasn’t being entirely serious.”

“Of course you weren’t. Do you expect me to find that a good omen? Don’t trifle with me, Grantaire, I’m not one of your grisettes, your flower-sellers. And I don’t deal in metaphor, when the times and our objectives demand that we speak plainly.”

He places his foot back on Grantaire’s thigh. 

“Get on with it if you want to prove yourself, or get away from me entirely.”

Grantaire, all attempts at humour abandoning him, bows his head with an attempt at resolution. One hand tightens around the cloth and the other once more cradles the heel of Enjolras’ boot. He brings the cloth to his mouth to wet it and then begins to run the rag softly over the leather. 

He thinks about the moment he first made this offer, and he pictures Enjolras having accepted him like this immediately – imagines him demanding that Grantaire prove himself, ordering him to his knees, with the others, not yet diligently departed to their respective tasks, remaining to watch Grantaire debase himself by accepting this honour. 

The fact that Enjolras has chosen instead to make this a private scene between the two of them reflects nothing more than an accident of timing, but it is still an intimacy of a sort that sets his pulse racing and, yes, stirs him in inconveniently, predictably physical ways, makes the sweat spring to the back of his neck. He brings a hand up to loosen his collar. 

His waistcoat is still half-unbuttoned. Grantaire drops the cloth and, with trembling fingers, undoes the rest of the buttons and shrugs the garment down his arms. He wraps the red fabric around his fingers and begins to buff the leather of Enjolras’ boot in short, firm, repeated strokes, working it to a gloss beneath his touch with more care than he has taken at this task since his schooldays, applying all the strategy and precision that he had so conspicuously let slip through his hands at the Barriere du Maine – 

“Are you finished?”

Above him, Enjolras raises an eyebrow, moves to step backwards. Grantaire is suddenly aware of the harsh rhythm of his breathing, the sting of his teeth worrying his lower lip.

“Only half-finished, I fear. Come, Enjolras, let me do the other. Let me obey – let me be thorough and meticulous, let me follow your instructions to the letter – ’

Enjolras’ hand clenches in Grantaire’s hair, stilling and quietening him at once. When Grantaire looks up he lets go just as abruptly, his expression still impenetrable. 

Grantaire’s scalp is tingling with the memory of the touch as Enjolras moves backwards to the nearest chair and sinks into its depths, his face in shadow, his boots lit by a streak of lamplight obligingly cast through the uncurtained window. 

He slides the yet-untouched boot forward with slow deliberation, almost languid. Despite the shadows, Grantaire feels the keen weight of Enjolras’ gaze upon him. 

“Quickly, then. You are doing this to prove yourself, I hope, not to indulge yourself.” 

At that, Grantaire finds it no easy task not to give in to bitter laughter. He shuffles forward on his knees to close the distance between Enjolras and himself, but it is all that he can do not to lower himself even further, to crawl, to let Enjolras bring him to heel. To polish his boots seems too high a tribute and Grantaire fights the urge to throw himself fully prostrate on the ground before Enjolras, to kiss and lick the leather beneath his mouth until it shines. 

His face shrouded in shadow, one hand gripping the arm of the chair, Enjolras is stiff and hard everywhere apart from where it might count - and Grantaire quite the opposite. It is no longer possible to say which of them might be indulging the other.

Grantaire shivers as he sets himself to polishing the other boot. The makeshift rag's rapid caresses make the leather gleam. He runs his fingers down the back of Enjolras' calf again, imagining pressing his lips to the toe of his boot. He imagines the reward of such impertinence being a kick, and pictures one delivered hard to his jaw, to his cheekbone, to his temple. 

The leather is of almost melting softness between his hands and it is pathetically soon before he finds himself having to press his palm over his cock, clamping his mouth shut on a sound more suited to animal than man.

Enjolras leans forward, into the dim pool of light in which Grantaire is crouched. His eyes intent on Grantaire, his breathing slightly laboured, he bites his lower lip in a manner that makes Grantaire's own breath catch. His expression is amazed, if faintly revolted. 

“Are you incapable of carrying out the simplest task without rendering it even more base, and degenerate into the bargain? Can’t you contain yourself around me for the smallest amount of time?”

Grantaire swallows hard, letting his eyes fall shut. He would shake his head in response, but the question hardly requires an answer.

Enjolras shifts, raises his boot and brings it up, digging its heel, sharp and precise, into the flesh of Grantaire’s shoulder, making him gasp, shocking his eyes back open. 

With the other boot, he presses, just once, against the seam of Grantaire’s trousers, as though to make certain that, yes, the man before him is desperately, hopelessly hard. He leans back into the chair again, and Grantaire hears him sigh. 

“Take care of yourself, then, if you must.”

Hardly daring to breathe, Grantaire brings his hand to the fall of his trousers, scrabbles at the buttons and takes himself in hand. 

With what he will later regard as extraordinary presence of mind, he presses the balled-up fabric of his waistcoat to his crotch and comes with a series of uncontrolled shudders, excruciatingly aware that Enjolras appears unable or unwilling to tear his eyes away from the sight before him. It feels like an eternity has passed before he dares to look up. 

Enjolras pushes the chair back and stands. His gaze is one of grim fascination, as though transfixed by the wreck of an overturned carriage.

“This was hardly carrying out my directions. This was turning them to your own ends, steeping them in the depths of your own desires – though I don’t know what else I expected.”

With impossible composure, he turns to gather his coat and hat, and the door has fallen shut behind him in the time it takes Grantaire to bring his breathing back under control. 

He wonders whether he has been, in fact, asleep and dreaming, or whether he remains so. As the shadows gather around him, Grantaire reflects that he succeeds only at failure. 

That night he drinks more than the night before, but the taste of dust and leather, sharp and bitter, remains at the back of his throat for days.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a kinkmeme prompt, and because there is never enough boot-kink in this fandom.


End file.
